- The Jerusalem Post’s Shmuel Rosner, along with some other pundits, predicts that President Obama and George Mitchell will demand a settlement freeze from Israel, "and not just the removal of illegal outposts": "The fact that Mitchell didn’t yet say such thing is not at all surprising since his current trip is a "listening" tour. Demands will come later in the game and with a new Israeli government."
- Sportswriter Will Leitch, writing in The New Republic, looks back at George Mitchell’s report on steriods in baseball and says no one should expect much from the new Middle East envoy: "Well, if he does the same job he did with the Report, he’ll show up in Gaza, find one guy who fired a weapon, give his name to the press, and–voila, you’re welcome, world–declare the Middle East crisis solved. One hopes President Obama is a tougher boss than Commissioner Selig."
- Christians United for Israel chairman John Hagee, at the Washington Post’s On Faith blog, praises Obama’s campaign promises about Israel and wishes him well: "I am astonished by those who wonder if evangelical Christians, a majority of whom did not vote for Mr. Obama, want to see our 44th President succeed. Of course we do. … We not only embrace our new President, we pray fervently for his success."
- The new president’s nod to "nonbelievers" in his inaugural speech thrilled humanist Jews, reports Richard Greenberg in Washington Jewish Week: "Nonbelievers are the last closeted group," said Rabbi Arthur Blecher of Beth Chai-The Greater Washington Jewish Humanist Congregation. Obama’s inclusive choice of words, he added, "was refreshingly forthright, and I got a big kick out of it."
- The National Jewish Democratic Council is asking American Jews to tell President Obama what they think his priorities should be, and hopes to share the results with the president and members of his administration. The form to submit your thoughts is here.
- Jim Besser in The Jewish Week says the new U.S. senator from New York, Kirsten Gillibrand, is going to be eating a lot of kosher chicken in the months ahead as she gets to know the Jewish community: "Gillibrand, a former member of the House representing the mid-Hudson Valley, brings to the job a thin foreign policy resume and a mostly blank slate on the Middle East. The word “Israel” never appears on her official congressional Web site, although she called herself an ‘unwavering supporter of the special friendship that exists between the US and Israel’ in a 2006 position paper."
- On day three of the Coleman-Franken Senate trial, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports the Coleman campaign’s tactics have shifted now that they’re trailing: "After he lost the unofficial lead in Minnesota’s U.S. Senate recount, Republican Norm Coleman called for an exhaustive review of rejected absentee ballots to see whether they should be counted. But a state elections official testified Wednesday that Coleman pursued a different strategy when he was leading. Deputy Secretary of State Jim Gelbmann said that in December the Coleman camp wouldn’t accept 1,346 absentee ballots that county elections officials said were wrongly rejected."
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